Emotional Intelligence For Dummies

Focusing on bad feelings tends to keep you in the same rut

Focusing on bad feelings tends to keep you in the same rut.

Claudio really uses the wrong way of dealing with bad feelings. By wallowing in them, you don’t move ahead. In the 1950s and 1960s, many psychologists felt that you had to fully experience your bad or negative feelings in order to get over them. Most psychologists and psychiatrists now know that theory isn’t true. The most prominent therapies today stress learning approaches — such as cognitive-behavior therapy as opposed to “catharsis” or releasing your anger.

Without feeling, you don’t really live. Your ability to feel joy, happiness, excitement, and even pain, hurt, and loss makes you human. In many ways, modern society takes away your ability to feel. You’re overly focused on your thinking skills throughout school, work, and your social life. Going through life without feelings is like living in a black and white movie.

Psychologists call this type of emotional change cognitive reappraisal, which means you’re developing a new way of looking at your world.

Being oblivious is an option, and many people seem to choose that route.

Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain,

Emotions and Life: Perspectives from Psychology, Biology, and Evolution,

Do you have a strong need to achieve (for example, make money, get the best job, be a professional, or be the most popular in your group), or are you just happy-go-lucky and laid back?

An emotionally intelligent person doesn’t think about how he would feel under the circumstances; he considers what he can do to help. An emotionally intelligent person thinks about what he might say to his friend to let her know that he understands and will